Moriko was both excited and nervous about the adjustment they were going to make regarding faeries and inhabitants.
This was the first time where her role as Faerie Queen was going to directly affect the dungeon's rules and inhabitants, and she was eager to participate in this aspect of her spouses' lives while also having some concerns about her performance.
Because of her concern, Moriko had been spending a lot of time on the Other Side while Mordecai and Kazue had been working on the ocean zone. She's spent her time meditating on her connection to their faerie domain and expanding her awareness of it as thoroughly as she could.
Now Mordecai and Kazue had let her know it was time to begin.
With the two of them sitting in the back of her head to help, Moriko began the process. First, she made herself aware of all the fey creatures who owed allegiance to them and were within their borders. These were all citizens of their faerie domain.
After that, she filtered those who were already inhabitants into one category in her mind, holding them off to the side. This was almost exclusively the little pixies born of Kazue's whimsy, and they vastly outnumbered all the rest.
She then created an empty category that Moriko mentally labeled 'future inhabitants'.
Separately, she started creating role concepts, such as playing the part of townsfolk or working at the onsen but also including participating in various combat roles.
The non-combat roles were then attached to both the future inhabitants category and the broader citizens category, while combat roles belonged exclusively to inhabitants, whether current or future.
These roles then had filters applied to control which types of fey might fill which roles. Moriko made sure to include fey from clans that were not represented in their current citizens, such as selkies.
Selkies were appropriate for any role in the ocean zone and creating this preset filter might make Azeria an inviting potential home.
Some roles had general filters rather than specific ones. Working at the onsen required having the ability to take on a bipedal form that would be considered at least aesthetically pleasing to most people, though this was not exactly the same as attractive. Physical transformations were required as they expected to have delvers able to casually see through illusory glamours and wanted a more unified experience than that.
Combat roles in the river or ocean zones required the ability to breathe underwater and live in that type of water, while the ocean zone had the additional requirement of being able to fly. The wetlands had looser requirements as there were multiple ways of being functional in that environment.
Creating this mental framework and holding it all in her mind at once was extremely difficult. In fact, Moriko would consider this impossible for almost anyone who didn't have some sort of extensive mental training. Her own training and experience were just barely enough to keep a mostly stable mental construct of this size and complexity, and that was with Kazue and Mordecai able to provide a little bit of assistance in keeping track of it all.
Moriko spent several hours building this construct using all the information she and her spouses had collected and discussed previously. One of the cores could have done it much faster, but Moriko wanted to be more involved and this was one of the few things she could do that was integral to how their place worked.
When it was complete and verified by both Mordecai and Kazue, Moriko started implementing this rule set.
The first part wasn't difficult as she connected to the fey citizens as their Queen and attached them to this mental construct.
Then allowing citizens to act in non-combat roles was only slightly difficult, though the connections were thinner and weaker than those between inhabitants. In short, any citizen working in the dungeon's territory under one of these roles would be acting like a lesser version of a contractor, and be recognized as an ally by inhabitants automatically even if they could not mentally communicate the way that a proper contractor could.
Bridging that final gap to enable citizens to choose to become inhabitants and fall into roles automatically, was the part that Moriko couldn't quite do. It fell too far out of her powers as a Faerie Queen and solidly into the power of the cores. Even with the passive authority that came with being their spouse and viewed by the inhabitants as nigh equivalent, the magic of the dungeon didn't respond to her attempt to set rules.
When Moriko reached her limit, Kazue gently took over for her and finished laying the connection and rules that implemented the mental construct. It was emotionally painful to feel so close to that final bit of connection yet to be so completely unable to reach across the gap.
Releasing the last of the work to Kazue brought Moriko's attention back to her body, which immediately collapsed with exhaustion and strain. That strain came with a hefty dose of pain racing along her nerves.
While she had gotten used to her personal powers, Moriko had little experience with her powers as a queen and had pushed herself to her limits. Mordecai was there in an instant of course, and Kazue only took a little longer as her invested avatar couldn't be moved the same way. The only reason their avatars hadn't been with her was because Moriko had insisted that they take care of business as usual while they were doing this.
Mordecai's healing touch felt good, but the sort of strain Moriko had undertaken wasn't so simple a matter to fix. She'd pushed the limits of her power, spirit, and mind, and the pain of her body was mostly a reflection of that. "Thank you loves," she said with a smile, then slowly sat up. "That really took a lot out of me. Your cores do this and more all the time?" It gave her a whole new perspective on how distracted her husband and wife get when working on parts of the dungeon.
"Yeah," Kazue replied as she fidgeted with a tail, "but, our cores are built for it. It's what that part of ourselves does."
Moriko wanted to be part of that aspect of their lives more, which was the reason she had pushed for trying to implement this rule. An option only possible this time because of her connection as a queen over the faerie half of this equation.
"I appreciate that you want to be a part of this," Mordecai said, "but the way you push yourself does worry me at times."
"What's to worry about?" Moriko asked with a smile, "In the worst-case scenario, I wake up on the next reset."
"Mm," Mordecai said, then shook his head, "Yes, probably, but that's not the absolute worst case."
Moriko stared at him for a moment and could see Kazue doing the same. Mordecai gave that little half smile he tended to use to soften a topic he didn't want to talk about. "It's not something I've seen happen, but I'm not sure how much our core can help a soul heal. It's very hard to harm a soul, but your soul's raw material is the same as your spirit's raw material, so it could happen. Your spirit will not heal instantly the way your body would."
Mordecai sighed and said, "I'm probably worrying too much. Your spirit is strong, it's just not used to this particular application. Think of it like having had to use several muscles you've never had to use before, and coordinating that motion. While your stronger muscles can help to an extent, your weaker muscles still take the brunt of it. But like other exercises, this is something you can adapt to, within limits."
"You are a worrier," Moriko acknowledged with a smile, "and I think one of the things I love about you is that you can worry without trying to coddle me." Thinking back on it, he'd always been willing to fight by her side and never tried to keep her out of harm's way. The closest was when he'd bought time for her to catch her breath after her run from the bandits.
"Now," she said, "you two help me up. I figure that by the time we get me bathed and cleaned, we'll have a few folks wanting clearer answers. Hopefully, I won't have any shaking either." Moriko didn't mind getting sweaty from being physical, but pain-induced sweat always smelled different. Neither form of sweat was particularly regal, so she needed to get clean anyway before meeting with their fey citizens.
Nearly two hours later, Moriko and her spouses were seated on their thrones on the faerie side of things, though it was far less formal than the party that they'd first held here. The group gathered to ask questions was small as they represented only a portion of their faerie citizens, and they had less than a hundred of those right now. Many fey were not bothered much by the cold of winter, but it was still not a time of year that encouraged much travel.
Not that they were certain that there was going to be a rush of applicants come spring either. Reputation was a currency, but different types of reputation bought different things. Being new and exotic brought visitors while uncertainty about their future and stability limited people who wanted to settle here.
Which meant they were getting many of the more desperate folk.
Well, there was only so much they could do about it. For now, Moriko was going to try to be a responsible queen at least. Not that she felt very queenly.
The whole thing was still weird. While traveling, she had been mostly concerned about the impact her title had on herself and her power. When they had arrived at home, there wasn't much change in that immediately as their domain had been a growing and shifting thing that was not fully stable nor inhabited, so it didn't matter much.
It was only when they had their opening ceremony that it started to hit home that she really was a queen of sorts now, however small that kingdom.
She also found that it was easier to be formal and more distant with their fey citizens. While the rules that Moriko had laid out earlier were known to the citizens of the domain as soon as they were created, this only applied to rules.
There was no mental or emotional communication or other connections like a dungeon's inhabitants had. Part of her had been expecting there to be more, but that expectation hadn't been thought out. It had simply been an instinctive anticipation based on her experiences with the dungeon.
After a couple of hours, everyone's questions and concerns had been answered as well as they could be. None of them were eager to jump at the idea of becoming an inhabitant and being bound so thoroughly, but some were certainly considering the option.
However, more of them were interested in the non-combat roles and she was pretty certain that over the next week or so they would begin trickling in.
Fey didn't always need to have jobs in the same way more mortal beings did, many could happily subsist on a wild way of life, but some thrived the most when they felt useful to others.
With faerie matters tidied up, Moriko was happy to head back to their home and enjoy a relaxed evening with family. Tomorrow she had different duties to perform, as it was her turn to give some training to their group of youths. Derek wasn't here yet, but Fuyuko, Shizoku, and Galan were all available for the sort of physical torture that made for strong bodies.